Water Woes Put Denver In A Bind

DENVER — An old story from the Dust Bowl days is making the rounds again in this mile-high and dry city.

``Daddy,`` the little boy says from his bedroom. ``I want a glass of water.``

``I know, son. We all do.``

In the wake of a Bush administration veto of Denver`s plan to erect a 615-foot-tall dam across the South Platte River about 30 miles downstream from the city, Colorado suddenly faces the prospect of either radically reducing water use or going to bed thirsty.

The potential water shortages-and opportunities for profit-began looming almost overnight because of the Environmental Protection Agency`s decision six weeks ago to stand by its recommendation to scrap the long-planned Two Forks dam.

The conflict pitted two classic interests: long-term development vs. protection of natural resources. It is a battle that has played out many times as the push for progress runs up against the awesome, arid beauty of the American Southwest.

The EPA concluded that the benefits of the project would be outweighed by the loss of scenic treasures if the dam were allowed to flood the Platte River Canyon.

The area is a prime habitat for ``mule, deer, elk, bighorn sheep, the endangered Pawnee Montaine Skipper butterfly and a trout fishery rated `unique and irreplaceable` by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,`` note dam critics like the Wilderness Society`s Stu Stuller.

For more than a decade, the state`s development-minded civic establishment had pinned its growth hopes on the water that the Two Forks dam would bring.

It was to be the last major water project in the West, successor to the Grand Coulee, Boulder, Flaming Gorge and Glen Canyon dams, all marvels of engineering that have determined whether the region`s agriculture thrived or withered and whether its cities and suburbs bloomed or baked.

Denver currently gets its water from a series of dams constructed over the years by the Denver Water Board in the Rocky Mountains. The annual demand is 265,000 acre-feet, with 1 acre-foot the equivalent of an acre covered by water a foot deep.

The maximum amount of water that the Denver system can produce is 295,000 acre-feet. Currently, an average Denver family of four uses an acre-foot of water a year, which costs $176 in Denver, and about double that amount in the suburbs.

Because of the EPA`s decision, Denver residents, who for years had been assured that they would have sufficient water, find themselves being urged to landscape their yards with rocks, cactus and desert grasses, known as xeriscaping, instead of Kentucky Blue Grass.

But such talk in Colorado, which is cottonwood and sagebrush country, conjures visions of Phoenix without the palm trees.

Developer Tim Sanford, who has built thousands of houses in the south suburbs of Denver over the years, said his company, Sanford Homes Inc., has totally failed in its efforts to persuade new home buyers to conserve water.

Sanford said he constructed one subdivision in which each of the 2,100 houses had a xeriscape lawn. Every buyer has taken out the xeriscaping and replaced it with Kentucky Blue Grass and sprinklers.

Last week the Denver Water Board approved politically unpopular water conservation measures that local politicians had resisted for years.

The new measures include forcing all residents to install water meters, raising water bills, irrigating park lawns and municipal golf courses with waste water and even pressuring local consumers to buy new, ultraefficient toilets.

There already has been political fallout because of the water problem.

Denver Mayor Federico Pena, a leading proponent of the Two Forks dam, came under fire after it was disclosed that he is one of 60,000 residents whose water isn`t metered because of a loophole in the law that allows owners of houses built before 1957 to pay a low flat water rate instead of for each gallon used.

Reporters at the Denver Post added to the heat in a copyrighted story showing that many members of the Denver Water Board and other dam boosters use far more water than average citizens.

After years of touting bigger and better water projects, conservation has become the word of the day, conceded Charles Jordan, a longtime Denver Water Board planner.

``One of the messages we received from the public is that we are not doing enough in water conservation,`` Jordan said in response to complaints like one that surfaced when automatic sprinkling equipment was pouring tens of thousands of gallons of water on a municipal golf course in the middle of an intense rainstorm.

The scramble resulting from the federal decision has significantly boosted the potential fortunes of a bold coterie of entrepreneurs with a pocketful of schemes to market water.

Jordan acknowledged that Denver, for the first time, is giving serious consideration to a scheme by a Canadian millionaire and New Age leader Maurice Strong to tap deeply buried water deposits 250 miles southwest of Denver and pump it to the city.